“PODCASTS are really in at the moment,” says Dame Kelly Holmes as she talks in advance of appearing at events at the Edinburgh Wellbeing Festival next weekend. “They’re engaging with people.”

Last year, Holmes produced her own series of podcasts for Audible around a subject that is close to her heart –mental health. For well over a decade, the Olympic athlete has been a leading voice in the movement to share more and reduce stigma. And she is not alone.

A glance down any list of the most popular podcasts of recent times suggests we are in the midst of a mental-health awakening – titles like How To Fail, The Happy Place, Happy Mum Happy Baby, Feel Better Live More, Conversations Against Living Miserably, and Kelly Holmes’s own What Do I Do? Mental Health And Me. They have been part of the way we, as a society, have been opening up.

Holmes is part of the story of how we’ve begun to reduce the stigma around mental illness by talking about it. At 49, she is now both a Dame and, since 2018, an Honorary Colonel of the Royal Armoured Corps Training Regiment. The athlete, who won Olympic golds in the 800m and 1500m in Athens 2004, wrote in her autobiography, published in 2005, of the struggle she went through in the years leading up to her triumph. She described how she suffered depression and was cutting herself regularly because of the strain of dealing with sporting injuries.

“We’re in a much better place than we have ever been before,” she says. “I think the conversation over the last two or three years has accelerated. People have become more open, honest and transparent. The one way we can continue to stop the stigma that there has been in the past is to normalise conversation around it.”

There is still a long way to go. According to recent research by See Me, Scotland’s programme to end mental-health discrimination, one-third of Scots who have struggled with their mental health don’t feel comfortable talking openly about it.

“When I wrote my autobiography I wanted people to see that success can come from anywhere and it’s not just handed on a plate, and most successful people have worked extremely hard to get there,” she recalls. “I felt that the story was really more around the resilience and never giving up than actually the medals. I felt it was important that I shared that.”

What mattered most in her story was that she had kept going, even though seven out of the 12 years of her sporting career she was injured.

When the book came out, she recalls, there was a lot of focus on her depression and self-harm. “I was scared about my friends and family reading that because no-one knew about it at all. They didn’t know I’d written it in there and I was worried what they would say and more the fact that I knew they would be upset that I didn’t tell them, but at the time I didn’t know how to tell them.

“What it did make me realise was that they were there anyway and would have been if I had told them. My message to people now is that there’s always somebody there to listen and to talk to you, and to just have that ability to open up to them.”

What Do I Do? is a series of interviews with high-profile people about the mental health issues that have impacted on their lives, from Davina McCall, talking after a spin class at the gym she goes to with Holmes, about the drug and alcohol addiction she fought, to former Labour spin doctor Alastair Campbell, playing the bagpipes in the bathroom to make himself feel better and admitting he has suicidal thoughts.

Holmes recalls that before interviews she had deliberately not found out too much about their backstories. It meant there were real revelations happening there and then, and her emotional response was direct and genuine.

READ MORE: 'This is my life, warts and all': Dame Kelly Holmes on viral videos, depression and fitness 

“Even with Davina we go to the same gym occasionally and I know her from television and she’s bubbly. But I didn’t know half of the story about the drugs and alcohol. I was really shocked to find out how bad that was. And the same with Alastair with his suicidal thoughts and psychotic behaviour and his brother had schizophrenia. I didn’t really know all that side of it. I knew he had depression and spoke about it. He was in a really bad way that morning when we spoke.”

She admits she still finds herself in dark places now. “Most of the time I’m a Duracell bunny, and then other times I’m not feeling it and I tell people that,” she explains.

“I think it will always be part of me. But I know when I’m feeling low and I will probably talk and express it. I do on social media as well because I know it helps other people as much as it helps me.”

One of the things she has talked about in recent years was how much she struggled with the loss of her mum to blood cancer. In a post last year, she wrote: “When she left she took a piece of my heart with me that will NEVER fill. But grief is ok to talk about, because grief means you love and I loved my Mother Dear.”

Holmes grew up on a council estate in Kent, and spent some of her first few years in care homes. Her mother, Pam, was only 17 years when she was born, and her father, a Jamaican car mechanic, had left within the year. But, despite pressure from her parents to put her daughter up for adoption, Pam wasn’t about to let her go. “I realise how much she fought to keep hold of me,” Holmes has said. “That made me realise how strong a character she was.”

She reflects: “I’m quite open about how I feel about the bereavement with my mum and other situations because I wasn’t when I was in a really bad way. So now I just use it as a way and a platform ... I talk about people sharing and being brave enough to talk to someone – although I don’t like the word brave. I feel if I’m going to tell people to do I ought to do it myself.”

Exercise is one of the ways Holmes believes we can manage or improve our mental health. Last year, she published her guide Running Life: Mindset, Fitness & Nutrition For Positive Wellbeing. One of her events at the Edinburgh Wellbeing Festival is a fitness class called Military In Motion, which reflects her continuing relationship with the military – she joined the army at the age of 17 as a lorry driver, later going on to become an army physical training instructor.

While she says many types of activity can be helpful, she tends to recommend running and walking. “I think they are among the best ways – and not just because I’m a runner because obviously I’m not an international runner now. It’s the fresh air. You can have your own space. You can look at other things. You can hear different noises and sounds. You get that blood pumping round your body and it always makes you feel good.

READ MORE: "You need to know your rivals and you have to better than them". Dame Kelly Holmes on how Laura Muir can fulfil her Olympic dream

“The hardest thing for anyone is getting out the door – but once you get out there, you might ache a bit, you might be out of breath, but when you get back you feel good about it.”

Pod-happy. Five podcasts to help you through

The Happy Place

One of the most popular mental health podcasts, Fearne Cotton's Happy Place was launched in 2018 and rapidly became a hit. Celebrities, from Russell Brand to Nadiya Hussain, talking about addiction, depression, anxiety, or whatever other difficult stuff is going on inside their heads

XY blog

A ground-breaking show hosted by a Scot, Euan Plater, that explores the links between masculinity and mental health through interviews in which men talk about how they really feel. Guests have included filmmaker Jim Chapman, The Vamps’ James McVey and writer and mind coach Vex King.

Plater has said: "It gives men a place to go to hear other men. Whether it’s a celebrity or an expert or just an ordinary guy who’s gone through something – you can hear that individual open up to me and the other people on the podcast."

Brave Your Day

Colin and Charley Gavigan are Glasgow-based coaches and counsellors, all about helping people create "brave change" in their lives. Their podcasts feature interviews with an eclectic mix of guests from laughter-advocate Sharon Miller of Joyworks to Jacquie Smith who experienced the tragic loss of her daughter to suicide in 2012 and went on to set up a charity promoting acts of kindness.

Mentally Yours

Ultra-honest, hyper-fascinating, Mentally Yours, hosted by Metro journalists Ellen Scott and Yvette Caster, is full of frank and honest tales about what it is to deal with mental illness, and also what really is going on in our minds.

The Hilarious World Of Depression

Genius concept. Comedians talk about depression and it makes us all feel a bit better. "One part stand-up comedy and one part therapy session" is how Mother Jones described it.